Nicholas & Sebastian

Nicholas & Sebastian is an ongoing artist/project collaboration between British composer, Nicholas Sillitoe and Polish violinist/string arranger, Sebastian Grüchot.

In almost all of Nicholas Sillitoe’s film soundtrack work, as well as many productions with artist Anne Marie Almedal, Sebastian Grüchot has often appeared as a key musician, providing his delicate violin soundscapes to Nicholas’s particular score universe.

In the spring of 2020, as the world embraced the Covid-19 pandemic, Nicholas & Sebastian took creative refuge in the forested outskirts of Kristiansand, taking time-out to start a new project together; with the aim to combine Nicholas’s more melancholy, post-classical piano leanings, with Sebastian’s elegant, multi-layered strings. They immediately decided upon a framework; music for daydreams. 

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Somewhat inspired by the idea of imaginary film soundtracks, drawing upon minimalisist improvisation, processed field recordings, treated piano and strings; the pair began to write and record a body of work that would eventually all come together in their eventual album debut, “Reveries”. 

Unsure where to place these emotive, tranquil pieces, Nicholas reached out to his publishers at Universal Music, who in turn suggested he license this freshly composed material to their newly set up music production label, Nordic ID.

 “Reveries”, and the album’s key singles, “When The Light Breaks”, “Just Say Know” and “Sanctus (feat. Florian Almedal Sillitoe)" were subsequently released on all digital streaming platforms, throughout 2021.

In the summer of 2021, Nicholas Sillitoe approached film-maker Ola Røyseland to discuss creating a visual score to a number of these “Reveries”. As a film-composer, often finding himself scoring music to a completed script, or a picture-locked edit, Nicholas felt compelled to see how a director could “compose” a new visual narrative to the music, thus swapping around the traditional process of first film, then music, to then see where these “Reveries” could go.

With gracious funding from "Sørnorsk filmsenter" (the regional film organisation in southern Norway), Ola and Nicholas first scoured suitably desolate locations in and around Kristiansand. Armed with film camera equipment and a playlist of Nicholas & Sebastian tracks, the pair set off into the woods to see what stories the magic hour sunsets of suburban, southern Norway could bring. They eventually settled on four of the “Reveries” pieces for Ola’s filmic treatment.

The films made for “When The Light Breaks”, and “Just Say Know” both featured a fine cast of young actors, friends and family, shot and directed by Ola. Young people simply being natural on camera, capturing the subdued “corona” summer zeitgeist, in a time of hopelessness, uncertainty, quietude, and anxiety. 

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“Sanctus”, the meditative piece that Nicholas wrote for his boy soprano son, Florian Almedal Sillitoe, was also filmed at the empty main cathedral in Kristiansand; with his Ola’s daughter, Enya Røyseland, an evocative, lonely voyeur to Florian’s crystal clear vocal performance. 

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“Nemo” was also filmed in a languid black-and-white study of loss and grief, with Zyna Røyseland giving a poignant, poetic character portrait emphasizing both the inherent melancholy in the music, and the troubled times everyone seemed to be going through. Most of these films were made available as promotional videos for the Nicholas & Sebastian album release, and all exhibited in a multimedia installation at "Agder Kunstsenter", in September 2021. 

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At the “Reveries: Music For Daydreams” exhibition, all of Røyseland’s films were shown on separate screens, in separate spaces, each with headphones provided for listeners, with a number of props and symbols from the film production left scattered around the gallery. Nicholas also made a surround sound mix of various atmo/foleys from the “Reveries” recordings to add to the immersive, audio-visual experience. As Covid-19 restrictions were lifted, the exhibition thankfully was open to the public for one month, to fully enjoy the music for daydream(er)s.  

In 2022, Nicholas & Sebastian took their “Reveries” production out on a school tour in southern Norway, performing tracks from the album, with several of Ola Røyseland’s films once again projected onto screens. As in the original exhibition, sound design elements and props from the shoot were also used in the live performances, in collaboration with live sound engineer, Alf Vaksdal. The “Reveries” production will continue onwards in 2023/24, and be performed at further schools and colleges in the region.

Nicholas & Sebastian’s music is available for streaming on all digital formats, with several of the short films also available to see online. Many of their tracks have also been synched to various film & tv soundtracks around the world, bringing forth new narratives to the “Reveries”.

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Photo: Ola Røyseland.